Maintenance Artist

After becoming a mother, pioneering artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles published a daring manifesto: from that moment on, all of her childcare and household maintenance would be acts of performance art. The manifesto propelled her into the male-dominated 1960s avant-garde art world. This feminist artist and observant Jew soon became a staple of the New York scene, using her revelatory experimentations to link child-raising, cleaning, and sanitation as an interrogation into how maintenance work is valued and connected to issues of class, race, and gender. Toby Perl Freilich’s delightful documentary reveals that Ukeles—who would become the first artist-in-residence at the NYC Sanitation Department—draws explicitly from Jewish tradition, making it more inclusive and less patriarchal, and reflects Jewish values of social justice.